Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

From Gestures to the Hub, BlackBerry 10 has won us over. But is it too late?

Late last year, Samsung was the number one handset manufacturer on the Android side. Samsung and Apple accounted for 50 percent of the world's handset market share. BlackBerry, once the go-to business phone for just about every major company in the world, seemed to be tottering around on its last leg. As the company lost most of the world's smartphone market share, many looked BlackBerry's way and wondered what the Canada-based corporation was going to do to save itself.

After a year of speculation, leaks, and promises, BlackBerry provided its answer. The company unwrapped and released BlackBerry 10, the smartphone operating system on which it's betting the farm. While we were fortunate enough to have a first look at the gesture-based operating system during CES 2013, we walked away with a bit of trepidation. Those fancy gestures weren't working too great for us when we poked around during our half hour with developer-assigned handsets. It wasn't because of the prerelease hardware either—we were mostly perplexed at the idea that "gestures" and "a unified inbox" were the two game-changing features on which BlackBerry was wagering the company's future. Can BlackBerry 10 actually win users back to its platform with these particular elements, or will consumers just see them as gimmicks?

Andrew Cunningham has already written his review of the touchscreen-only BlackBerry Z10 handset, but that review focused on just the hardware. We wanted to spend some additional time using the BlackBerry 10 operating system, so that we could dive in deeply and give this new operating environment the review it deserves. Fortunately, there's more to BlackBerry 10 than a few gestures and a new inbox view. There have been plenty of questions asked, so we'll try to get through all of them. Really, we think you'll like what you see.

Gestures: A new way of life

Enlarge/ A handy cheat sheet for BlackBerry 10's gestures is featured within the Settings app.

Gestures are ingrained in everything the user does in BlackBerry 10 because the flagship hardware, the Z10, has no hardware navigation buttons. At first, moving around is confusing—the tutorial is frustrating, and the BlackBerry "flow" is very different from what we've grown accustomed to in other mobile operating systems. We've been so used to using buttons to go back a page or jump to the home screen that we went into this experience with hesitation.

BlackBerry 10 features four main gestures for navigation. The first and most important gesture is the quick swipe up from the bottom edge of the bezel, which brings users back to the home screen (a longer, steadier finger swipe from the middle of the screen will scroll the view). Swiping down from the top of the bezel will summon the Quick Settings pull-down shade from the home screen, or an options shade in other applications which support the gesture. Within any application, the upside-down J-hook—beginning from the bottom of the bezel and gesturing upward to the right—allows you to peek at the notifications and messages awaiting you in the BlackBerry Hub. (Left-handed people will have to hook the J the same way as right-handed people do, as there is no option for reversing the gestures.) Lastly, swiping from left to right scrolls through each screen, much like how the mechanism works on iOS and Android devices. With these four gestures mastered, the BlackBerry 10 experience becomes much more user friendly.

After about an hour of setting up accounts and then swiping to and fro, the gestures begin to feel second-nature. If you get lost in the beginning, there is always a cheat sheet (pictured above) neatly tucked away within the Setup app to replay the tutorials. New users and returning BlackBerry faithful can take comfort in the fact that they won't simply be tossed into the new gesture soup. While the full-on embrace of gestures may seem like a big shift from the traditional keyboard and touchscreen setup, BlackBerry has successfully figured out a way to take the gestures introduced in the PlayBook tablet and bring them to its next generation of handsets. (As an aside, only the swipe up from the bottom of the bezel has been lifted directly from the PlayBook.)

Of course, we can't push aside one fact: it really does take some time to acclimate your thumb to the general flow of the interface. At our first look at the operating system, PlayBook Product Manager Michael Clewley mentioned the philosophy of BlackBerry 10 was to “[flow] without having to think about it.” After more than half an hour with it, this philosophy made more sense. The only notable issue we could foresee with gestures is what might happen when the phone is handed off to a non-BlackBerry user. We passed the phone around to a few good friends, most of them iOS users and one a Windows Phone evangelist. No surprise, they were confused about how to get around the screens. If you really need a friend or spouse to help you multitask from time to time, consider giving them some prep time with the tutorial beforehand.

Multitasking

Enlarge/ The handy running apps screen, also sometimes referred to as the Home screen.

Swiping up from the bottom of the bezel brings you to BlackBerry 10's running apps screen. This area serves as a multi-functional screen for the operating system: it acts as BlackBerry 10's application switcher and task killer, which requires a quick tap on the “X” at the lower right of a given app. Some apps offer widget-like functionality. For example, the Pictures app cycles through the photo album like a miniature slideshow, while the Calendar app shows upcoming meetings and events. You can have up to eight actively running applications, arranged in a pair of 4x4 grids that you can swipe between. Tapping an app's tile then brings it to the foreground. There is also no way to permanently “pin” applications to the running apps screen, as they are cycled out with each newly launched application. However, the most-accessed ones will remain on the running apps screen.

Enlarge/ The BlackBerry World screen acts like a widget on the running apps screen by cycling through featured content.

What's nice about this method is its ease of use. Unlike Android or iOS, it doesn't require pressing a button to bring up all of the open applications or double tapping a home button—all it takes is a simple gesture. You can also quickly kill any application that's not in use, and you can get a quick glance at what is going on in the background.

The Hub: It’s everywhere you want to be

Enlarge/ J-hook or swipe over to the Hub to get a look at all of your notifications from around the Web.

The Hub is more than just a notifications center; it lets users check on all of their social and e-mail accounts in one place without having to launch a whole mess of applications. E-mail, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Facebook, LinkedIn, voicemails, missed calls, and system updates are all lumped on this one page. All it takes to access it is a swipe to the right from the home screen or a J-hook from the lock screen or any other application. Any time you receive a notification for any service, the corresponding icon will shine a bright red asterisk.

Having one unified inbox can feel overwhelming at first, especially if you're trying to manage a bunch of accounts at once—but it's actually quite handy. It's easier to do an at-a-glance check of all of your accounts without having to sift through icon badges, and it's instantly accessible with that J-hook gesture. If it all becomes a bit of a mess, users can simply swipe to the right to sort through messages and notifications by service. Of course, this does mean you have to leave whatever application you're currently in to check what a friend has written on your wall.

Enlarge/ You can add various accounts to the Hub, including all of the major social networks and Evernote.

Enlarge/ Tweak the settings of the Hub so you don't have to see what you don't want.

For the business-centric user—the one that BlackBerry has always held as its core audience—the unified inbox makes sense. Those who use Facebook for marketing and social correspondence, Twitter and LinkedIn for networking, and several e-mail accounts for communicating need to have everything one place. Frankly, even the trigger-happy teenager might find this suits his or her social-centric lifestyle.

All services are properly integrated into the Hub, too—it's not just for marking things as read. Direct messages and Twitter replies can be easily sent from within, and LinkedIn networking requests can be accepted or declined with one touch. You can accept Facebook event invitations or navigate to individual profiles of newly accepted friend requests, send e-mails, or compose BBMs and text messages. Furthermore, you can also start a video chat with another BBM user and enable screen sharing once the connection is made.

Enlarge/ Associate Writer Andrew Cunningham and I engage in a BBM video chat.

Enlarge/ Screen sharing was surprisingly smooth, with no stutter or buffer to speak of.

As an added bonus, BlackBerry allows developers to decide whether or not they want to integrate notifications within BlackBerry Hub.